So the 25-year-old turned on her webcam and kept up a running commentary while she stuffed the mementoes -- pictures, a scrapbook documenting a trip to B.C., a red plastic tractor -- into a box and jammed a lid on top.
The resulting fi ve-minute video, entitled "Packing up the dreams," is now among the 70 million video offerings on YouTube, one of the most popular destinations on the Internet.
The broadcasting site is home to many such moments of vulnerability, stashed between footage of obscure Japanese game shows, music videos and Stephen Colbert's latest tirade. Six million visitors fl ock to the site every day to upload their own footage and search the vast existing trove for offbeat entertainment. The most popular videos are watched millions of times.
Teenagers suffering their fi rst breakups are fond of posting farewell videos, complete with acoustic guitar and blurry photos overlaid with text declaring "He was the love of my life." An even more common species of online exhibitionist uploads footage of themselves singing, dancing and lip-synching -- apparently oblivious to the fact their enthusiasm vastly outweighs their talent.
These private moments used to be concealed behind a bedroom door or in a diary buried at the bottom of a sock drawer, and it was a serious violation if prying eyes fell upon them.
The YouTube phenomenon demonstrates a shift in the concept of privacy, says Gisele Baxter, a lecturer in English who specializes in popular culture at the University of British Columbia.
The human urge to document our most intense and secret thoughts is an old one, she says, but now there is an online world where virtual strangers happily trade and comment on all variety of them.
With about 100 views, "Packing up the dreams" is anything but a hit, but after Winney uploaded it she received a number of empathetic e-mails from fans of the "breakup box" concept. Her ex saw the video and was "upset that I put our entire relationship into a box," but she admits even that part of the ritual brought some malicious comfort.
Robin Hamman in the United Kingdom maintains the blog cybersoc.com and has spent the last decade studying online communities. For those who pour their hearts out, he believes YouTube performs a similar function to the stranger in the corner pub who listens silently while the person on the next stool pours out their woes.
YouTube viewers fl ipping through the virtual pages of other people's video diaries or mocking their dance moves enjoy something akin to the cheap voyeuristic thrill of America's Funniest Home Videos, he says.
"Watching these videos of people dancing around in compromising positions, wearing odd outfi ts in their bedroom in the middle of the night, can be quite revealing and engaging," Hamman says. "It gives us some insights we wouldn't normally get." As for the "stars" of the show, Leslie Chan, a professor of new media studies at the University of Toronto, says that in a cultural landscape littered with MTV and reality shows, "Everybody thinks their life is a music video." With webcams and video-capable cellphones becoming as ubiquitous as Starbucks, Chan says YouTube provides a repository for the steady stream of footage created by tech-savvy young people. He believes the potentially vast audience for their weekend exploits is a reality often lost on those holding the cameras.
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